Category Archives: Steam

Queen Of Thieves now officially out!

Above you can see the game official trailer!

I am very proud to announce that my new RPG/Dating sim “Queen Of Thieves” is now officially out for desktop platforms! You can check the game official page and download a demo here: http://winterwolves.com/queenofthieves.htm

Like always, a Steam and mobile release is planned, but will come in the next months (hopefully before Christmas, though not sure).

Better late than never

This is the first game of my series called “Better late than never” ™. Haha jokes apart, it’s one of the many games I announced back in 2011, that for a reason or another were delayed until now.

To be honest, to make a good RPG, you need at least one year of work just for the design, skill balancing, enemies, encounters, and other mechanics. So it’s only late by 4 years 😉

This game was intended from the beginning to have a more “casual/accessible view” on the RPG world. Sure, there’s the Nightmare difficulty mode which it’s still, well, a Nightmare to play. But in general the approach is more similar to Loren than SOTW. Following the majority of complaints, I have designed this game so that:

  • there’s no time limit. You can grind as much as you want. The final boss battles are designed for a party level 30, but you can grind up to level 35 if you want!
  • there are more rock/paper/scissor mechanics. There’s guard skill like in the past, but now there’s also a skill that can break the guard. You can cast fire spells to a target, but if you hit it with melee, you’ll get burned effect. And so on.
  • the party is fully healed after each fight, not like SOTW
  • there’s again a skilltree system, with two different skill trees (offensive/defensive) for each sister
  • there’s a lot of characters to romance: since you can play as all the three sisters, and each can potentially romance two characters each, there’s a total amount of 6 straight + 6 homosexual romances, for a total of 12!

There are also a couple of new features that I’ve introduced in this game:

  • the inventory has 5 slots, 4 armor and 1 for a weapon. Less than Loren and SOTW.
  • in addition to this, the armor pieces are only aesthetic: instead you can socket gems in them to add stats. So you can customize your character’s appearance AND the bonus stats you get from each piece of armor.
  • there are some new starting conditions: like Ambush that lets you move before enemies, or (based on the story choices) in some battles one of your party members might start injured, etc.
  • there’s no front/back row. This to make the battles last less than before.
  • except for a couple of fights at the end, there’s no game over. You’ll always manage to escape the battles if you lose.

So as you can see, definitely a more casual/user friendly approach. I dare to say that between the ones I’ve made, this game is the most appropriate for people new to RPGs.

However as I said don’t be fooled: if you play even only in Hard mode, the fights won’t be a walk in the park! If you’re not familiar with RPGs you should play in Easy mode. Or if you don’t like RPG at all, maybe play in “visual novel mode”.

That’s all for now. I hope the game does well, since it’s well written, has nice art/music, interesting gameplay and I enjoyed doing it. I really like doing RPGs, even if they’re really time/money draining, and generate stress anyway (lots of testing is needed).

But in the end, I think it’s worth it 🙂

Heirs & Graces now available on Steam

Yes, finally my yaoi dating sim Heirs & Graces is out on Steam! Get it now here:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/482990/

it comes with a 10% launch discount. I think it’s fair, since it was originally released on my own site at beginning of June, so 3 months have passed 🙂

As usual those who bought direct, will be able to redeem a free Steam key from tomorrow at this URL:

http://www.bestanimegames.com/steam/

In other news, I have been working like crazy on Queen Of Thieves recently, and I did a lot of updates on the beta, which is at really good point in my opinion. You can find more info about the game and play the beta demo visiting my forums here:

http://www.winterwolves.net/viewforum.php?f=32

Please note: the game is content complete, and I’m only doing tweaks to the RPG gameplay right now. If you’re only interested in the story, and you plan to play it in “VN Mode”, you can safely buy it now, since that part has been finished and working since July 🙂

Love Bites – Introducing Viktor

intro_viktor

First of all, PSCD is now out on Steam, so if you bought direct you can redeem the key as usual from this site: http://bestanimegames.com/steam/

And now, let’s introduce another character of Love Bites:

Viktor Hammond
Age:  21

Viktor is among the rarest of people, those who are aware of the supernatural, but remain essentially human.  Often such individuals transcend their human self, whether by becoming something decidedly non-human, or else pick up torches and pitchforks to hunt it down.

Viktor is neither; instead, he is a scientist, documenting all that he notices until he can reveal it at a later date.  

Initially, he was one of those skeptics who would laugh at someone if they mentioned believing in ghosts, or having seen a UFO.  

However, his certainty suffered its first crack when he went on a ghost-hunt and encountered a real ghost.  At first, he assumed he was the butt of some elaborate practical joke, but his fellow classmates were just as astonished with what they witnessed.  In fact, the only person who didn’t seem surprised was his teacher at the time, Nadia.

Viktor eventually wrote the incident off…until, one night at a bar, he noticed something strange with the bouncer.  Whenever he greeted people at the door, the peoples’ breath would coalesce in the warmth, but not the bouncer.  Ever observant, Viktor couldn’t help but notice the reflection of the customers in the window…but the bouncer didn’t have it.

Remembering the ghost incident from earlier, Viktor realized there was more going on around him, and decided to dedicate his life to the paranormal.  While retaining his major in physics, his grades are starting to flag…and irritating his family in the process.  Considering they were covering his college tuition, they figured he was throwing away his future…and their money.

This was a blessing in its own way.  Before, Viktor was quite reclusive, but if he wanted to continue his studies, he would have to interact with the rest of the world.  He enjoyed the independence this fostered, and he wouldn’t go back.

It’s not that Viktor is a party animal, but if he wants to learn more about those who aren’t quite human, then its best to study them in their natural environment, as it were.

With the widening of his world-view, Viktor has come to reconsider just what is science.  After all, it isn’t like the two realms have to be divorced; chemistry arose from alchemy, and astronomy from astrology.  Perhaps those who thought they could reanimate the dead might not have been as wrong as they thought…

Other games

I’m making good progress in all the other games: Heirs & Graces scripting is going at good pace, same for Queen Of Thieves (I’m reviewing all the scenes/choices and adding relationship changes and other stuff). Writing is going well on the other games like Undead Lily, Roger Steel and more.

And in case you didn’t know, C14 Dating beta is at a very good point. It’s already completely playable without errors, people are only finding minor stuff and typos, so if you want to check: http://winterwolves.com/c14dating.htm

Future card games and update

Future card games

dancing

So about 10 days passed since I released my card game PSCD. It was my first card game, and as you can imagine I was unsure about the results. If I compare it to my latest game, the RPG Seasons Of The Wolf, I can see that PSCD revenues are about 3 times less.

But it’s NOT bad as it sounds! First of all, SOTW was based on an existing world, so many players who liked Loren could potentially like that one as well (especially since I now I am implementing a “VN Mode” for it as well!) and was a RPG. It was also $25 vs $20.

Regarding PSCD, since it has also a story, and many of my players buy the games for the story, I won’t have any real data until the game is on Steam where a bigger audience will judge it (even those who aren’t much into stories but like more the gameplay). It will probably be around March.

Anyway I was saying that even if the sales ratio remains the same, I need to take into account a very important thing: time/money spent. As for money I spent a bit more on PSCD than SOTW (but not by much) but regarding time…! I spent 10 months coding SOTW back in 2014, while I spent 3 months (and not even all of them full time since I was following other projects) doing PSCD.

So this means that even if PSCD keeps selling at 1/3 of SOTW, it will still be a better ROI for me 🙂 Yes because as you can imagine is better for me to work 3 months on something, than 10 months.

This means that I will probably be doing more card games, besides the already planned Undead Lily. As always I’ll use the same base engine, but probably modify the rules a bit, since I like to experiment every new game I make.

C14 Dating update

Now to the best news of this week: it looks like that C14 Dating might be out very soon! I don’t want to say any date yet, but really I think maximum next month the beta should start. The final release depends on the beta as always but since it’s not a complex-gameplay game, it shouldn’t take long. Currently the coder is finishing/testing the various minigames like the one below:

c14minigame

Queen Of Thieves update

Progress on Queen Of Thieves have been made this week as well: all the otome CG images are done, and I almost finished coding the last part of the robbery mini game. While there’s still some writing left (and probably some more art/adjustment needed), even this game looks like could be ready for this Summer 🙂

otomeromances

Queen Of Thieves catacombs exploration

First of all, as you probably know, there’s the Steam Summer sale going on, until the 21st June. All my games are 50% off, except SOTW which is 25% since is still very new.
Check it here: http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Winter%20Wolves

Now, about the topic of this post: this week I’ve been busy finishing coding the “dungeon exploration” part of my upcoming game “The Queen Of Thieves”. As I posted in forums already, this part is separate from the main gameplay in which you go robbing the houses of the nobles.

Its mainly purpose is to provide a way to gain experience (the infamous “grinding”) for those players who like it. You’ll be able to access it from the map, as seen in the image below:

updatedmap

You can visit them once a day, and every time you finish a level you’ll need to wait several days before a new level opens (this to limit the grinding speed a bit!).

The first time you enter, you’ll be greeted by Tiberius (one of the romanceable characters, and the guards captain). He’ll accept your offer to help exploring the “catacombs” which are nearby the town.

tiberius

Once you enter them, you’ll see the view of the current catacomb level, like a sort of blueprint/map. You’ll be able to move through the various locations, which will be full of encounters. Each level will have different types of monsters. In this case, the first one has giant rats and disease rats.

catacombs

Before the fight, you’ll be able to place strategically your party members and also see the enemies level and monster type, alongside a short sentence describing the monster feature (for example the disease rat can inflict disease, while the giant rat is very fast).

prebattle

There will be different winning and starting conditions: in some fights you’ll need to kill a specific enemy to win, in others you’ll be ambushed so enemies start with a speed bonus the first round, and so on.

I plan to have 9 levels in total, which should be enough to provide a good variety. Also, differently from what I originally thought, I am also going to write a short story about what happened in those catacombs, so if you manage to explore them all you’ll discover some important information 😉